Jesus is Coming Soon

Do you believe that? Paul did, and he lived his entire Christian life as if Jesus would be coming to get him at any time. As a result his faith-attitude served to make him spiritually healthier.

“Paul was wrong, ” you might say.

Paul would tell you that his actions were right, despite the fact his timing was off. A proof text is found in 1 John 3:2-3

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

In case you missed it, whoever has this hope (like Paul had) becomes purer and thus more like Jesus. I think it was Billy Graham who said (when asked, “What if God is not real”), “Then I will have lived a better life.”

Paul is on a whole other level and would have likely responded, “Not only is Jesus Christ the real-deal, in my waiting for His return I am being made better!”

Evil Christian?

What is the net result when Christians do not live as if Christ’s return was imminent? Jesus tells us Himself in Matthew 24:48-51

But if that evil servant says in his heart, ’My master is delaying his coming, ’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Fear of Being Wrong

That has always been my biggest roadblock, “What if I am wrong; won’t I look foolish?” God might say that we have no business fearing man when we should be fearing Him.

Good Christian?

I know both of his publicists, as well as several folk that has spent many hours with this great man, but I am usually the one with an e-mail or driving the car.

So, I will just have to utilize those memories as my muse for now. In doing so, after reading this story in Christianity Today - the latest in the Billy Graham big screen movie debut series - I am sitting back, laughing out loud and envisioning what Thanksgiving 2008 at Billy Graham's house will be like.

You see, this farce of a film that was reportedly produced without the historic evangelist's consent and features a bit actor from shows soon to be released on Lifetime and Cartoon Network, is now working on splitting up the family:

"I don't want to say anything wrong about my brother, but I just don't see it the way he does," Gigi Graham, the oldest of Billy Graham's five children, told Christianity Today. "Franklin called me and said he thought the movie was dorky. But I think it's good and positive, and I think it honors the Lord and my mother and daddy."

So there, Frankie! Why not just come out and say, "I know you are but what am I!" You see, this sibling rivalry does have a reason. Gigi is actually a consultant for the movie and doesn't have beef with the movie. Franklin, on the other hand, could barbecue an entire brisket with the angst he has against this film. And although Billy has made no public statement, Franklin and one of his publicists have been quite verbose about the DVD... er, movie.

[BGEA publicist Mark] DeMoss also noted a scene where young Billy faints at the hospital when he learns that wife, Ruth, had given birth to their first child, Gigi—when in fact, Billy had been preaching in Alabama at the time.

To which, Gigi retorts in that snarky "Daddy, he hurt my feelings by looking at me funny so go take away his XBOX or something" fashion:

"People need to remember that the movie is fiction based on fact," Gigi Graham said. "Daddy was not at my birth, but who cares?" Gigi Graham, who has seen the movie about 10 times, said filmmakers were simply injecting some humor into the scene.

And the hits just keep on comin'. Wall watchers, get your popcorn ready because it seems the headlines on this film are much more exciting and melodramatic than the actual movie will be. Good times indeed.

Billy Graham has been closely involved with the National Council of Churches (in America) which holds the copyright of the Revised Standard Version bible and the New Revised Standard Version. This bible is based on corrupt manuscripts and sources, which they will openly admit to be not the original bible. But what they also say is that the original bible therefore cannot be found.

The original bible we know is the greek and hebrew manuscripts of the King James Bible. It still remains unchallenged.

When you read the Revised Standard Version, you may not notice anything different. It is only when you understand that the manuscripts they decided upon contain many differences, and that they therefore say there is no true bible, you realise what a corrupt bible this is.

Billy Graham has personally sponsored the Living Translation of the bible which is a further adaptation of the Revised Standard Bible and contains the same errors. Billy Graham is very aware of these errors, which most people are, when they study the facts closely.

When Billy Graham began in the late 1940s, he is quoted as saying, "The three gravest menaces faced by orthodox Christianity are Communism, Roman Catholicism, and Mohammedanism." At that time he was a small-time tent evangelist holding meetings in Los Angeles.

Suddenly a host of news reporters appeared at his meetings. When he asked why they were there, he was told that he had been "kissed by William Randolph Hearst" (A Roman Catholic Publisher) who had telegraphed the editors of his nation-wide newspaper chain to promote Graham.

Banner headlines began attracting thousands to his meetings. At the same time, American Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Cushing and Bishop Fulton Sheen began mentioning Graham favorably in the Catholic media. In the subsequent 40 years, Graham became known as the national pastor, with open doors to presidents, business magnates, and religious leaders including the pope.

Graham's organisation clearly has close associations with the Roman Catholic church. He has close associations with the Pope and allows all churches to come under the same influence. He will tell Roman Catholics to go back to their original churches to win them to Christ. It is impossible for them to win them unless those people leave the Roman Catholic church, not go back in there!

Billy Graham's crusades are filled by Roman Catholics, who get the word from Jesuits in the Vatican to pack his stadiums. The Roman Catholics have spent millions to promote Billy Graham as the world's greatest evangelist. This they will not deny.

One of the problems with Billy Graham is that he preaches in enclosed settings, which encourages other Christians to think that they have to preach the Gospel in closed doors, behind closed doors, in private auditoriums and in stadiums. But the Gospel should be preached in public on the streets, and this is exactly what Billy Graham does not do, and therefore the world does not hear the Gospel. The Lord in the Gospels said you should go not forth if they say “behold he is in the inner chambers, behold he is in the confined auditoria”, do not go there. Rather go out in the open, like when they first preached the Gospel. And this is what Billy Graham has taken away from the Church. Listen to this: Matthew 24:23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. Matthew 24:26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

A second problem with Billy Graham is that he is extremely popular. And he is extremely popular within closed circles. He is never attacked by the media. This is because he never speaks out openly against sin, and never condemns it. This is very different to Jesus Christ, who openly condemned sin and is hated by the world.

John 15:18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

Does this not make Billy Graham a false prophet? Doesn't the Jesus Christ of the bible denounce a woe on him?

Luke 6:26 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

Am I not speaking the truth? Most people will not see it that way because their minds have been more or less poisoned by the Prosperity Gospel. Possibly you have been led to believe like them, that you ought to be popular, that you ought to be successful, but what does the bible say? Doesn't it say the opposite? Can you not see that the prosperity gospel is a product from hell?

Billy Graham rather leads people to go back to the idol worship of the Roman Catholic Church.

.

NORMAN VINCENT PEALE – Also controlled by the Vatican as a top-ranking 33^rd Degree Freemason.

Norman Vincent Peale and his wife Ruth have also been involved with the corrupt bible, by their association with the American Bible Society. This bible society has produced two further adaptations of the corrupt Revised Standard Version Bible, which are The Good News Translation, and the Contemporary English Version.

In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale published his famous book The Power of Positive Thinking, thus becoming the chief father of positive confession methods.

Peale also was a promoter of the idea of "positive imaging" which has become popular in many charismatic circles

One characteristic of these false methods of Peale are that they can be used whether you are a Christian or Not This is what makes them false. The gospel is about receiving salvation from hell, and getting into heaven. It is not about doing things which cannot promise you eternal life. Can positive confession ever give you eternal life? Never! so this is actually a false gospel.

And any false gospel, if it is a gospel at all, is actually made by the devil.

Peale's "positive imaging" can be used in the business world by professing pagans, and these methods will never get them an inch closer to heaven.

The truth is, Positive Confession is not a salvation experience. A more serious problem though, is that Positive Confession is often mixed together with the Christian message so that it creates a lot of confusion about the salvation experience.

Peale himself has described his own conversion in 1957, during a Billy Graham crusade which is 5 years after he wrote his book on positive confession. In which case, his book is not gospel, since he did not have the Holy Spirit when he wrote it. Why then, is the Church teaching his positive confession methods, which is not the gospel, and which is not inspired by the Holy Spirit?

The gospel of Jesus Christ talks of a Jesus Christ who condemns sin. A Jesus that was born of a virgin; A Jesus that is the eternal God; a Jesus that died and shed His blood for man's sin, and rose again.

When Jesus ceases to be the focus, or when Jesus ceases to be the Jesus of the bible, who rebukes the world of its sin, then that church is finished. This positive confession gospel does not focus on Jesus. Jesus may be mentioned, but just enough for people to think they are hearing a gospel sermon.

Nothing is said about how Jesus condemns sinners in hell forever, and how Jesus tells us to surrender the world! Really. This is the gospel. And if you have never heard that before, that we need to surrender the world and sin before we can be saved! Then you have heard of a different Jesus to the Jesus of the bible! You have been deceived! In all likelihood, you have been deceived by the gospel of Positive Confession which cannot give you salvation at all!

A further problem of this positive confession teaching is that it promotes the opposite idea of the true gospel. This false opposite idea is that we need to take possession of the world, instead of lose the world, as the gospel quite clearly states.

John 12:25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

These very words of the gospel are twisted to mean something else. Many claim to have this 'revelation', that we must take this world and inherit it, instead of that world above. The salvation of souls is no longer the focus, and the devil thus deceives people out of their eternal life. Why? because people become wedded to their dreams for this world, and tell me does their heart think of souls while in this state of mind? The bible tells me this is impossible.

You cannot serve God and mammon - You cannot love the world and God - If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him! According to my bible, you will lose salvation if you love the world, this is the correct teaching of the bible!

Positive confession has kindled many false teachings from the pit of hell. These teachings all revolve around the error that we need to GAIN out of this world as a sign of godliness. Gain is godliness, is the gospel of the devil.

PLAN OF THE ALUMBRADOS

The Jesuits sent Norman Vincent Peale to introduce the ideas of POSITIVE CONFESSION into the Church. In attempt to bring the Pentecostals into the one fold which includes Roman Catholics, and people of every faith in fact, CAN PRACTICE positive confession. It as another secret arm of the Jesuits, well though out, much like the Charismatic movement. The Charismatic Movement was to draw in Pentecostals into the exercise of spiritual gifts which would unite them with the Roman Catholics. Another Counter-Reformation tactic of the Alumbrados.

The State | 08/23/2008 | Billy Graham’s son criticizes new movie.

CHARLOTTE — Franklin Graham has criticized the new feature film about his well-known father, saying “Billy: The Early Years” includes a few scenes that never happened in real life and others that are “greatly embellished.”

“My father’s life has been documented in many ways, and I have always appreciated those who painstakingly sought to tell his story accurately,” Franklin Graham said in a statement posted this week on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Web site, www.billygraham.org.

The younger Graham, CEO of the Charlotte-based group, also made it clear he and the BGEA neither collaborated with the filmmakers nor endorsed their movie, due in theaters Oct. 10.

His spokesman, Mark DeMoss, said Graham put out the statement not to hurt the film — “he doesn’t care if people see it.” Rather, he worried that some pastors who have agreed to host preview screenings in their churches were under the mistaken impression the movie was somehow authorized by the BGEA.

Film producer Larry Mortorff, who made a copy available to Graham, declined to comment earlier this week.

DeMoss said Billy Graham, 89 and living in Montreat, N.C., has not seen the film.

Asked this week which scenes Graham objected to, DeMoss offered what he called “two simple examples ... producers would refer to as creative license.”

In one, the young Billy Graham faints at the hospital when told wife Ruth has given birth to their first child, GiGi. In fact, Graham was not at the hospital when GiGi was born; he was in Alabama, preaching.

The other scene DeMoss noted shows Billy and Ruth Graham tossing a baseball back and forth: “Actually, that’s not something they would have done.”

A scene Franklin Graham found more “troublesome,” DeMoss said, was one he categorized as embellished. In it, Bob Jones Sr., then-president of fundamentalist Bob Jones College, tells young Billy Graham, a student who has questioned some of the school’s strict views, that he will never amount to anything. In the scene, darkness partly obscures the ranting Jones.

DeMoss said Franklin Graham felt the scene “completely misrepresented Bob Jones” and has written a letter to Bob Jones III, now president of Bob Jones University, assuring him “we didn’t collaborate on the film.”

But according to Billy Graham’s autobiography, “Just As I Am,” the scene may not be so off the mark, though the real Jones’ ire appeared to be caused by Graham’s decision to leave Bob Jones College for Florida Bible Institute.

“I asked for an interview with Dr. Bob in his office and told him about my discontent and my thoughts of leaving,” Billy Graham wrote in his 1997 autobiography. “His voice booming, he pronounced me a failure and predicted only more failure ahead.”

In his short but sharp posting about the movie, Franklin Graham also faulted the film for not sharing what he calls his father’s passion to preach the Gospel.

“He felt there was not sufficient treatment of his father preaching, and when he was preaching, it was watered-down,” DeMoss said.

The movie, filmed in and around Nashville, Tenn., covers Billy Graham’s teenage years in Charlotte and his time at college and as a new, sometimes awkward preacher. Scenes show him courting Ruth, receiving Christ at a 1934 tent revival in Charlotte and giving a few early sermons in a fire-and-brimstone style.

In the movie’s climax, Graham conquers any doubts about his faith in the Bible by telling God he will never question what’s written in the Scriptures.

“Billy: The Early Years” won’t hit theaters for almost two months. In hopes of creating advance word of mouth, the filmmakers are inviting pastors to more than 50 preview screenings.

The movie’s producers have hired GiGi Graham as a consultant to help promote the film. She praised the movie in an interview with a Lynchburg, Va., TV station.

DeMoss acknowledged Franklin Graham has spoken with his sister about the movie.

“He told her there are some inaccuracies in the film, which she doesn’t dispute,” DeMoss said. “She can do what she wants, but she’s not representing the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, nor would she say she is.”

Tonight over dinner I was having a conversation about leadership with a leader. As I sat there and listened to the different story's.... the word Legacy came to mind. Leaders can't leave a Legacy behind sitting off on an island of their own. Anytime you see movements...leaders...organizations...you will always see a team of people behind it! So, get off your island and don't waste the day.

The simplest approach to believing that the Bible is from God can be stated thus. The Holy Spirit inspired the Bible. As the Author of the book, He is also the One who causes people to believe in His divine authorship. All that people have to do is respond by faith to the work of the Spirit in them.

Some of the most respected Christians came to accept the Bible in this way. The most well-known of these in recent times is perhaps Billy Graham. In the 1940s, when he was a young minister, he went through a period when he struggled with the Bible’s authority. He could not explain all its apparent contradictions or bridge the gap between the Bible and modern science. Many things in the Bible did not make sense to him. But then, in 1949, as he was praying outside in the woods of a retreat center east of Los Angeles, he finally said, “O God! There are many things in this book [the Bible] I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions (…) others are raising" (Graham, Just As I Am).

One might expect him to now reconsider whether some of his basic premises about the Bible were wrong; whether he should consider other views on the Bible different from the one he had so far adopted. But he did not. Instead he simply felt that he ought to resolve the issue somehow, and at last, he writes in his autobiography, “the Holy Spirit freed me to say it.” What the Holy Spirit freed him to say was this: “Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.”

I do not doubt that in the course of Billy Graham’s subsequent ministry he mentioned many other reasons for accepting the divine authorship of the Bible, and that he provided a platform for many able Christian apologists, but his personal threshold of accepting it was faith—and faith alone.

Readers who are familiar with C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity might at once notice a major difference between his experience and that of Billy Graham. Throughout his life, C. S. Lewis thought that “a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.” As C. S. Lewis makes clear elsewhere, he did recognize that there is more to faith than merely the evidence, but he did not think that one should hold to a faith contrary to the evidence; that it was a special virtue to believe something against a rational basis.

The question arises that when Billy Graham said he accepted the Bible as God’s Word “by faith,” whether he meant thereby something essentially in harmony with his intellect, though transcending it, or something contrary to his intellect. Did he believe in the divine authority of Scripture in spite of the evidence and thus, according to C. S. Lewis, did something “merely stupid”? The above passage from Billy Graham’s autobiography would suggest as much. He himself, however, chose the phrase “beyond my intellect” rather than contrary to it. What he might have meant to say was this: “Lord, You know much more than I do. You know everything. If I knew all you know, I think that the apparent inconsistencies in the Bible would be reconciled. And since I have, on other grounds, good reason to trust You, I believe this to be Your Word, even though I, with my imperfect intellect, cannot explain all its riddles.”

If this is what Billy Graham meant, his prayer was more reasonable than it might seem at first sight. After all, it does not contradict Reason as such to recognize the finiteness of human reason and trust the infinite Reason of Almighty God.

However, there is a significant difference between something going beyond human reason and something going flatly against it. Only because God knows much more than we do, it does not follow that the little we do know is of no value. A very complicated math formula might go beyond even the brightest mathematician’s ability to reason, but the equation 2+2=5 goes against the reason of every schoolboy. If a man told a boy that two and two equaled five, the boy should not say, “Well, there are so many complicated math formulas I don’t understand. This man must know it better than I. So I accept that two and two makes five.” If he did that, he would not merely go beyond his reason but against it. Again, one can believe in the infinity of the universe, even though the concept of infinity goes beyond our reason. We cannot fathom it because we are finite. But it does not go against our reason. It is perfectly reasonable, but it is also utterly unfathomable.

Into what category, then, should we put Billy Graham’s prayer? Was it like a schoolboy wrongly conceding that two and two is five, or like someone who admits that a very complicated math formula goes beyond their reasoning abilities and that someone else knows better? The answer depends on (1) what Billy Graham meant by calling the Bible God’s “Word”; (2) where and how he formulated his definition of the Bible being God’s “Word.” For faith itself could not have given Billy Graham the idea of it being God’s Word, nor given him a definition of what that means.

Faith always needs a very concrete understanding to work with. There is no such thing as believing something without knowing what it is that you believe. You cannot say, “I believe in dragons,” if you only know the word dragon but have never seen a picture or heard a description of what a dragon is; if you do not even know whether you mean the European concept of dragons (such as we find in Beowulf, The Hobbit, or, most recently, Eragon) or the Chinese concept of dragons (which is quite different from the European one). For all you know, dragons might be an exotic flower. To say that you believe in dragons is therefore meaningless.

Billy Graham could not have believed something without understanding what he meant by it. When he decided to believe—by faith—in the Bible as God’s inspired Word, what exactly did that entail? All orthodox-minded Christians believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, but not all agree on what exactly that means. Did Billy Graham, as it were, have the “European dragon” or the “Chinese dragon” in mind?

Presumably Billy Graham thought his faith in the Bible’s divine origin entailed a conservative Evangelical view of the Bible. But was that doctrine part of the Spirit’s work in him or the result of a previous decision influenced by the type of seminary he went to? If he had been a Catholic, an Orthodox, Ethiopian, Anglican, a Mormon or a Charismatic, and had had the same experience during his prayer, the faith that he put into the Bible would have had a different content. He would have attached a different meaning to the term “Word of God” than he did, which means that his faith would not have been the same. But even within the Evangelical camp there are considerable differences. Which version did his faith embrace at that moment? Some view the Bible as a sort of divine encyclopedia; others have a more differentiated view. Did Billy Graham accept the Bible as a divine encyclopedia that night or as something else?

If Billy Graham’s definition of what he accepted at that moment did not conflict with basic logic (that two and two cannot make five), his faith was indeed beyond Reason and not in conflict with it. But if his understanding of the Bible as God’s Word went against very basic, logical observations about the nature of the Bible, then he did indeed force himself to believe something against his reason and accordingly did something, as C. S. Lewis said, “merely stupid.”

The above points lead to the important conclusion that faith itself cannot be the foundation of faith. Faith is only the response to content that arises from a three-fold source which C. S. Lewis called Reason, Experience and Authority. Faith by itself is only the hardware that requires information, just like a computer responds to information fed into it. Without such information a computer is useless. Likewise, faith needs information to function; it needs something that it can respond to. When Billy Graham said that he accepted the Bible as God’s Word by faith, such a statement would not have been explanation enough for C. S. Lewis. He might have asked (though perhaps not out loud), “What exactly do you mean by that? What is the content of that faith? And what are the sources that you got that content from?” To answer it by saying that faith is simply a direct work of the Holy Spirit is not enough. The Holy Spirit does not produce faith by working on a blank mind. One’s mind has to have received previous information through Reason, Experience, and Authority.

If we accept C. S. Lewis’ own account of his conversion, then his journey toward accepting the Bible was a slow process guided by Reason, Experience and Authority, not something that came by faith alone.

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Read more about C. S. Lewis' approach to faith and the Bible in my upcoming work The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought About the Greatest Book.

(Footnote: Contrasting Billy Graham and C. S. Lewis is not to imply that they ever criticized each other. The interviewer Sherwood Eliot Wirt once asked Lewis about his opinion on Billy Graham, and he answered, “I had the pleasure of meeting Billy Graham once. We had dinner together during his visit to Cambridge University in 1955, while he was conducting a mission to students. I thought he was a very modest and a very sensible man, and I liked him very much indeed.”)

I suppose this could become another "Brickhouse Series" (scroll down and look to the right) because we have another twist to this Billy Graham movie thingy that regretfully shows you the Church has such a difficult time doing things the right way, the first time!

1. First, we hear that the Billy Graham movie is finally going to be made; however, they get some bit actor freshly killed off "Desperate Housewives" because he has a slight resemblance to the evangelist. Nice. At least the production crew cares about capturing the "essence of the role".
2. Next, we learn the movie is having "Advanced Screenings," which seems to be Christianese for "straight to DVD". And why? Maybe it has something to do with today's story???

Today, we discover a movie about the greatest thing to happen to the Body of Christ, since maybe... well, him... can't even get the respect he deserves because the friggin' script can't even get a Fedex overnight to Little Piney Cove. This should be professionally-produced, brilliantly-marketed and feature good acting like "The Passion of the Christ" instead of, ooooh, "Megiddo: The Omega Code 2."

According to a statement put out by Franklin Graham and an interview in the Charlotte Observer, I have a brilliant conclusion. I'm no brainiac, but I presume the Graham clan won't be making it to the world screening premiere:

For starters, he said through a spokesman that “Billy: The Early Years” includes a few scenes that never happened in real life and others that are “greatly embellished" ... and “he doesn't care if people see it.”

Nice. There's nothing like a ringing endorsement to kick off a DVD... er, a movie. Instead of 'two thumbs up', it seems the makers of "Billy: The Early Years" just got two well-deserved fingers. Uh, from Franklin... not Billy. IJS.

In this brief sermon clip, MacArthur succinctly debunks the "wider mercy" or multiple paths to God heresy that permeates the apostate Roman Catholic Church (salvation through works) - and is gaining popularity in "mainstream" Christianity (thanks to Carlton "the Heretic" Pearson and Donnie Earl "Neph-Son" Paulk, among others).

John MacArthur on Catholicism and Billy Graham:

Enough said.

On my flight back from Seattle last Sunday, I watched a recently posted presentation of Billy Graham by TED.com. It was a recording of a talk that Billy Graham, a world renown evangelist, gave back in 1998 during the formative years of the Ted Conference (an annual conference that brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers).

On this recording, Billy Graham spoke on the topics of technological advances, faith, and the reality of human suffering around the world. I was deeply refreshed by his perspective on man's inability to resolve some of the most foundational problems of mankind even in the midst of great innovations.

As someone who thrives on new ideas and means for progress, I was once again reminded of our need to keep perspective on our own finiteness. It is always humbling to listen to people like Graham. It was especially good to hear him in the midst of our current series through the book of Ecclesiastes at New Hope (see previous post).

I hope you take a few minutes away from your work of progression and advancement to listen to a voice that has experienced much in life through trials, a remarkable journey of faith, extensive travel, and interaction with some of the greatest thinkers of human history.

Click here to see this video of Billy Graham's talk.

Also, feel free to share your thoughts about his presentation afterwards.

There is a newer book written by Graham's daughter Ruth titled: In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart. I have not read this one yet and it looks like it is just coming out on paperback. If you have read this one would you please give a short review?

If you hadn't noticed yet in reading my other blog posts, I truly have a heart for wholeness and healing for our hearts and that can only come from knowing The Truth and replacing the lies with Him. His name is Jesus. I'm praying today for you!

Blessings, Cindy

• Auto – insurance, fuel, loan, service
• Children – sports, college, education supplies, toys
• Bank/Finance  Charges
• Cell Phone
• Childcare
• Clothing – shoes, accessories, dry cleaning
• Dining Out
• Debt – credit card, student loan
• Donations – church, ministries, other
• Entertainment – camping, golf, movies, parks
• Gifts Given – birthdays, Christmas, other
• Groceries – food, paper products, cleaners, toiletries
• Haircuts
• Hobby – photography, scrap booking, knitting, gym membership
• House – furniture, mortgage, improvements, pest control, garden, power washing
• Life Insurance
• Material Things – magazine subscriptions, books, music, décor
• Medical – dentist, eye dr., yearly checkups, prescription medicine
• Office – postage, printer supplies, computer supplies, internet svc
• Pets - shots and food
• Telephone – including long distance
• Utilities – electric, gas, trash pickup, water, cable

• Auto - insurance, fuel, service
• Clothing/Health – shoes, accessories, dry cleaning for adults/parents, haircuts, toiletries, gym membership
• Debt – credit card, student loan, car loan, bank and credit card finance charges
• Donations – church, ministries, other
• Recreation – dining out, camping, golf, movies, parks
• Gifts Given – birthdays, Christmas, other
• Groceries – food, paper products, cleaners
• House – utilities (elec/gas/phone/cable/internet), furniture, décor, linens, mortgage, improvements, pest control, garden, power washing, lawn mower, repairs
• Medical/Life – insurance, dentist, eye dr., yearly checkups, prescription medicine
• Office/Hobby – postage, printer supplies, computer supplies, scrap booking, knitting, books, music
• Investments/Savings
• Education/Travel

"If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will straighten out almost every other area in his life." Billy Graham

Amazon synopsis:

Now available in trade paper, "Leading with Billy Graham" will help readers discover a new way to lead - from the background. Many Christians who want to impact the world mistakenly assume that influence belongs only to the front-man. But the life of T. W. Wilson proves otherwise. As Billy Graham's closest friend and longtime personal assistant, T. W. Wilson turned his own valuable leadership skills to the task of supporting Billy and ended up influencing thousands of lives both directly and indirectly. His life is an inspiring testimony to the power of "next-level" servanthood to maximize the power of the church for the twenty-first century. Filled with interviews and stories from many of Billy Graham's associates and eight pages of photographs, this book offers a fascinating look inside the most successful evangelistic ministry of modern times as well as an inspiring blueprint for purposeful servant-leadership.

Overall, this is a good book. Dennis retraces Wilson's life as he serves God and helps Billy Graham in his ministry. Dennis teaches how to be a next-level influencer - someone who is there helping people and doing God's work, but without recognition. I found a lot of this teaching helpful and have already put some into practice, such as daily Bible reading and sorting out being accountable to someone.

Dennis explores Wilson's life well through interviews and extracts, however, I sometimes got lost and didn't understand where the story fitted in with what Dennis was saying.

It is not a long book, 200 pages, but there were times when I felt the book dragged a bit and Dennis seemed to repeat himself a little.

7/10 - it was a helpful and interesting book, but not the easiest to read

Amazon synopsis:

Now available in trade paper, "Leading with Billy Graham" will help readers discover a new way to lead - from the background. Many Christians who want to impact the world mistakenly assume that influence belongs only to the front-man. But the life of T. W. Wilson proves otherwise. As Billy Graham's closest friend and longtime personal assistant, T. W. Wilson turned his own valuable leadership skills to the task of supporting Billy and ended up influencing thousands of lives both directly and indirectly. His life is an inspiring testimony to the power of "next-level" servanthood to maximize the power of the church for the twenty-first century. Filled with interviews and stories from many of Billy Graham's associates and eight pages of photographs, this book offers a fascinating look inside the most successful evangelistic ministry of modern times as well as an inspiring blueprint for purposeful servant-leadership.

Overall, this is a good book. Dennis retraces Wilson's life as he serves God and helps Billy Graham in his ministry. Dennis teaches how to be a next-level influencer - someone who is there helping people and doing God's work, but without recognition. I found a lot of this teaching helpful and have already put some into practice, such as daily Bible reading and sorting out being accountable to someone.

Dennis explores Wilson's life well through interviews and extracts, however, I sometimes got lost and didn't understand where the story fitted in with what Dennis was saying.

It is not a long book, 200 pages, but there were times when I felt the book dragged a bit and Dennis seemed to repeat himself a little.

7/10 - it was a helpful and interesting book, but not the easiest to read

Per questo, tra il progressista Obama e il laico Mc Cain, da qui a novembre sarà una gara di allineamenti a un pubblico che probabilmente non amano (se Obama ha idee molto di sinistra sul diritto all'aborto, Mc Cain rivendica una posizione smarcata da vincoli religiosi e refrattaria agli ambienti evangelici più fondamentalisti), ma di cui si rendono conto di non poter fare a meno.

Come riportava Paolo Valentino sul Corriere di oggi, alla fine la sfida di Lake Forest ha visto tre vincitori. Due sono i candidati, che tutto sommato si sono salvati facendo una egregia figura davanti a un pubblico esigente, Obama citando la Bibbia, Mc Cain parlando di fede e di valori. Il terzo vincitore, forse il vero vincitore morale, è Rick Warren, moderatore dell'incontro nonché pastore della chiesa di Lake Forrest.

Warren non è solamente pastore di una comunità che conta migliaia di membri, come molte negli Stati Uniti; è anche un predicatore influente e un affermato autore di best seller cristiani da milioni di copie (per la cronaca sono giunti anche in Italia, pubblicati da Publielim, riscuotendo un successo non trascurabile per l'asfittico contesto editoriale evangelico). Soprattutto, però, risulta uno dei pochi predicatori noti al grande pubblico e percepiti ancora come "puliti".

Non è facile, per chi assurge a una certa notorietà, dribblare le malelingue e le invidie; non è facile amministrare la fama - che l'essere umano tende sempre a trasformare in idolatria - evitando colpi di testa, leggerezze, sbandate che in passato hanno compromesso gravemente l'autorevolezza di predicatori ispirati ma non abbastanza forti. Non è facile tenersi fuori dai giochi politici, e non è facile nemmeno resistere alla tentazione di approfittare della propria posizione, scodellando ai fedeli qualche dottrina comoda e redditizia (per sé).

È una situazione rara, che non passa inosservata. Per questo Warren, all'interno, viene percepito da molti come un punto di riferimento in un ambiente evangelico frammentato, tendenzioso, conteso come non mai tra integralismi e sincretismi.

E per lo stesso motivo Warren viene indicato dagli osservatori esterni come possibile successore morale di Billy Graham, il predicatore che per cinquant'anni ha suggerito una linea cristiana ai presidenti e ai credenti degli Stati Uniti.

Staremo a vedere.

Wonderful talk.

Lexington

The next Billy Graham

Aug 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Rick Warren has emerged as the most powerful evangelical in America

Illustration by KAL

ON AUGUST 16th John McCain and Barack Obama will both appear at one of America’s great mega-churches, Saddleback, in Lake Forest, California, to discuss “leadership and compassion”. The result of the “discussion”—it is not a formal debate because the candidates will be appearing in sequence rather than side by side—will not only help “values voters” decide which man they support. It could also determine whether the host of the event, Rick Warren, can lay claim to one of the most sought-after titles in America, that of “the next Billy Graham”.

Billy Graham has been the most powerful Christian in America since the 1950s. Eisenhower summoned Mr Graham on his deathbed. Richard Nixon played golf with him. George Bush senior called him “America’s pastor”. George Bush junior credits him with planting the “mustard seed” of faith in his heart. When Mr Graham was hospitalised in 1976, three presidents (Nixon, Ford and Jimmy Carter) rang him in a single day.

But Mr Graham is 89 years old and unwell. He led his last “crusade”, in Flushing, New York, in 2005. He now seldom leaves his home in Montreat, North Carolina. He remains a name to conjure with: John McCain recently visited him to pray for “God’s will to be done in the upcoming election”. But for the most part the prophet has retreated to the mountain-top.

Which raises the inevitable question: who will replace Mr Graham as “America’s pastor”? For many Americans this is a silly question. The American constitution is based on the strict separation of church and state. What’s more, Mr Graham was the result of a unique confluence of forces, such as the cold war between “godless Communism” and a godly America and America’s embrace of a bland civil religion in the wake of the second world war. None of this is remotely relevant in today’s America, with its religious diversity, cacophonous culture wars and out-of-control political partisanship.

But America has always been engaged in a delicate balancing act between its secular constitution and the religious instincts of its population. Mr Graham was only one in a long line of America’s pastors that included Charles Finney, George Whitefield and Dwight Moody (after whom Dwight Eisenhower was named). And Mr Graham was not quite the bland preacher of consensus that he now appears. He once described Eden as a paradise with “no union dues, no labour leaders, no snakes, no disease”, and infuriated the left in the 1960s by refusing to come out against the Vietnam war.

Americans continue to have a healthy appetite for religion in public life—so long as it is not too hard-edged or divisive. Americans are not only overwhelmingly religious—92% say they believe in God and 63% believe that the Bible is the word of God—but they also believe that religiousness is a sign of good character. Only 46% of Americans say that they would vote for an atheist for president, compared with 56% who would vote for a homosexual and 93% who would vote for a black. All this year’s serious presidential candidates wore their religion on their sleeves.

There are plenty of candidates for Mr Graham’s unofficial job, such as Mr Graham’s son, Franklin, who has inherited his father’s striking looks as well as his organisational abilities, and mega-preachers such as T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen. But all have drawbacks. The younger Mr Graham has described Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion” and Messrs Jakes and Osteen are too attached, both personally and theologically, to the “prosperity Gospel”. None of them has Mr Warren’s combination of qualities.

Mr Warren could hardly look less like Mr Graham—he has a beard rather than a lantern jaw and sports open-necked shirts, mostly of the Hawaiian variety, rather than a suit and tie. But the two have a remarkable amount in common, from their Southern Baptist faith to their entrepreneurial skills.

Both men have proved to be geniuses at adapting religion to their times. Mr Graham took the barbed-wire fundamentalism of his youth and reshaped it for the post-war era of two-car garages and upward mobility. Mr Warren took post-war evangelicalism and reshaped it, yet again, for the world of suburban anomie and the search for meaning.

This required entrepreneurial skills of a high order. Mr Graham founded two of the most powerful organisations in post-war evangelicalism, Christianity Today and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Mr Warren has become a one-man dispenser of “purpose”. More than 400,000 pastors have attended his seminars on the “purpose-driven church”, and more than 30m people have bought his book, “The Purpose-Driven Life”. Mr Graham has preached to some 215m people in 185 countries. Mr Warren, though not yet in that league, is also going global, not only with his preaching but also with his charitable work.

Both men also share political skills of a high order. Like Mr Graham, Mr Warren allowed himself to get too close to the Republican Party. In 2004 he supported Mr Bush behind the scenes, taking part in White House conference calls and informing thousands of pastors that they should regard issues such as abortion and gay marriage as “non-negotiable”. But like Mr Graham, he has realised that you need to tread lightly on those non-negotiables if you want to preserve your influence. He is now emphasising poverty, HIV-AIDS, global warming and overseas aid.

A purpose-driven man

The evangelical voters who will watch Messrs McCain and Obama on Saturday are unusually confused in this election cycle: lukewarm about the Republican but also unsure about his Democratic rival, weary of the culture wars but also unwilling to discount a role for religion in public life. The man who understands this voting block better than anybody else is Mr Warren—and, whoever comes out on top in November, Mr Warren will be there to whisper in their ears.

Billy Graham is still alive, (if not particularly well) last time I checked.  Seems that as news pubs dwindle downwards, the first to go are the fact-checkers and copy editors, some kind of corollary to 'truth is the first casualty.'